


Belladonna

by thecloserkin (tabacoychanel)



Category: Crimson Peak (2015)
Genre: Character Study, F/M, Pre-Canon, Sibling Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-24
Updated: 2019-10-24
Packaged: 2021-01-02 07:29:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,737
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21157895
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tabacoychanel/pseuds/thecloserkin
Summary: Motherhood makes monsters of us all.





	Belladonna

**Author's Note:**

  * For [disgruntled_owl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/disgruntled_owl/gifts).

It was a mistake to keep the baby. Lucille hadn't done it to please Enola, or even to please Thomas. She'd done it because here, finally, was incontrovertible proof that Thomas was hers and no one else's. It was almost as good as holding a marriage certificate.

People said it changed you, being a mother. But it had not changed _their_ mother, had it? If there was such a thing as maternal instinct Lucille had exhausted all of hers cushioning Thomas from their Mother's––and the world's––blows. There was nothing left for the sickly squalling creature who slid out from between her thighs, whom she handed over to Enola readily enough.

When their mother used to hit Thomas, she made Lucille bring the cane, and she made Lucille watch. Wild horses couldn't have dragged Lucille away from the spectacle of Thomas in pain, but that wasn't the point. It was a show of force. No matter how Lucille defied her mother, Lady Beatrice held the whip hand: she had the power to hurt Thomas. _One day_, Lucille vowed, _no one will have the power to hurt us_.

The sickly baby's very existence was a source of pain to Thomas, every labored breath a dagger to his heart. Ergo, the baby had to go––and Enola with it. It was a pity. Enola had understood, as far as any outsider could, how it was between Lucille and Thomas. Enola also refused to let the baby out of her sight. Perhaps, after all, motherhood was not instinctual. Perhaps it was learned: and what one learned was to live in perpetual fear lest harm befall the child. Lucille had learned to fear the sharp crack of Lady Beatrice's cane against Thomas's flawless skin, the days shut up in the attic with no food and scarcely any water. The worst part was the uncertainty: When would the next bowl of porridge or the next beating arrive? Lucille would not have hesitated to cut open her own veins and bid Thomas drink her blood, had it come to that. Lucille knew better than to try to separate Enola from the baby. She killed them both, just as she had killed the previous wives, just as she had killed Mother, just as she would kill anyone at all who threatened to come between her and Thomas. The truth was, Lucille had known a mother's fear for a long, long time. She had honed it into a weapon, and fueled by that one pure distilled emotion there was nothing on earth she wouldn’t have done.

+

Thomas had been a perfect cherub, sweet tempered and quick to laugh. He ought to have been the apple of someone's eye. Instead they saw no one save the servants for months at a time. They saw Mother only when she was displeased with them, and that was how Lucille learned that love was a loaf leavened with pain, because if there was anything worse than Mother's lashings—verbal and physical—it was her total indifference. Better to be beaten black and blue than to be ignored. Lucille hummed lullabies to toddler Thomas and promised never to leave him alone.

She never doubted that Thomas loved her. Thomas loved everyone, was prepared to forgive any transgression no matter how grievous. He was soft and impressionable; Lucille was the steel plate and armor encasing him. They needed each other. The instant he was of age he had come and taken her away from the nightmare of the sanitarium. Lucille had been beginning to lose words by then. Some days the power of speech was beyond her, and she clung to sanity by singing, fingers ghosting over invisible piano keys. If she ever doubted that Thomas needed her as much as she needed him, such doubts were put to rest the day he rescued her and brought her home. Allerdale Hall was home still. Where else could they have gone? Who else could they have been? For better or worse they were their mother's children.

She had the portrait of Lady Beatrice brought out of the gallery where it was collecting dust, and hung above the grand piano. It was her first decree as lady of the house. Back then there had still been servants.

Later, after the servants had been dismissed one by one, after it was just the two of them in the rotting husk of their ancestral home, the piano was her solace and she played as often as she could get away from the neverending drudgery of cooking and cleaning. Thomas was conscientious enough she could count on him to complete any task she set him, but the role of taskmaster was hers. Left to his own devices Thomas's mind wandered to his workshop and his inventions. He was a dreamer, and the mundane labor of running a household could hardly be expected to capture his imagination.

He did like to listen to her play. He would turn the pages for her when she was learning a new piece. Once, his lips brushed her ear as he leaned forward, and she shivered involuntarily. He noticed. A few pages later he did it again, on purpose. Her eyes flickered upwards. "Really, Thomas?" She had meant her tone to be quelling. Instead her own unsteadyness gave her away.

"I wish you could see your face," he said. "The way you concentrate ... it's the same as when you come for me."

Her fingers froze an inch above the keys. “I—“ she knew the flush must have crept all the way up her neck by now. Thomas had one hand resting at the small of her back, and she fancied she could feel the heat of his palm through layers of brocade and petticoats.

"So beautiful when you come for me, Lucille." His breath was warm on her neck. He wasn’t touching her at all; there was no skin-to-skin contact. She was practically panting with need.

"Why are you doing this, Thomas?"

"Because you need it," came the devastating reply.

"I _beg_ your pardon?" She hadn't asked for this. It was out of character for him to take the initiative.

"You're wound far too tight. Can't you see it?" The only thing she could see was that his pupils were blown with arousal. She knew that look, knew exactly what she would find if she unlaced him right now.

She closed her eyes. "We'll last the summer, maybe, but this winter will ruin us. Of course I'm wound up. All I do is look at the account books while you're off playing inventor."

"Look, I know you don't think much of my tinkering, but for once I want you to let _me_ take care of you. I will find a way. I will dig us out of this hole, I promise. Open your eyes, Lucille."

She did, and found herself staring over his shoulder at the portrait of Lady Beatrice. A frisson of something shot through her, straight to her core. Thomas followed her gaze. "You said you wanted her to see everything we do," he reminded her softly. "Everything."

"I hope she does. I hope she's burning in hell. But this isn't...what if someone ….the servants, the neighbors? If they should happen upon us..." She had to suppress the urge to reach out and cup his cheek, for if she touched him now she would not be able to stop. She shoved aside the memory of a hundred public embraces, kisses averted into hugs under the prying eyes of strangers.

"There's only John, and he's blind as a bat. You know as well as I do that we have no truck with the neighbors." Thomas traced her collarbone through the high neck of her gown. "Do you know what I think? I think the greater the risk of discovery, the more wanton you get. Like the first time in the attic, when you caught me tending to my nocturnal needs." With practiced ease he removed a pin from her hair and laid it carefully aside on the piano, reached up to remove another. "You couldn't bear to see me go without, when you were right there, and more than willing to satisfy my needs. And you did. Satisfy me. God, you were a vision, Lucille, in just your shift with your hair unbound." His eyes never left hers. If he kept this up she was going to come without moving anything except her eyeballs. "You didn't care about the risk then, did you?"

Whatever choked response she might have made, she swallowed it at the first touch of his fingers stroking her thigh through her drawers. "I think you enjoy running the risk. I think it turns you on. I think you want to show the whole world you’re mine, isn't that right?" He _was_ right. She was a puddle of raw need, she could feel the wetness seeping into her underclothes with every word he uttered. "Just like we showed dead old mum."

That was the day she branded him with her teeth. Their mother had left marks aplenty on him, and it felt only right that Lucille should leave her own. It was rough and uncomfortable and the angle was all wrong. But she had never come so hard in her life as she did while looking their mother’s portrait dead in the eye, clutching Thomas's hip with the hand that bore their mother's ring. How had he sensed it was exactly what she needed?

The following week they sailed for Paris with the proceeds from pawning the last of Mother's jewelry––all except the ring. The ring, Lucille flatly refused to part with.

+

The plan was to for Thomas to pitch his newest invention to potential investors while Lucille pitched herself to potential rich husbands. It didn't work out that way.

"I've told you there is no need for this," said Thomas.

They were on the terrace, and the masque was in full swing behind them, tendrils of laughter and snatches of music drifting past them into the mild October night. Lucille's fingers tapped against the stem of her champagne flute. "And I've told you, we do this my way or your way, but either way we go home before the snow melts. We cannot afford to return empty handed."

"I am entirely of the same mind. But the way you're going about it is unlikely to yield results."

"Ah, yes, pray describe what _results_ you've achieved with your superior method." Thomas was no businessman: he lacked the killer instinct to close the deal, and the others could sense it.

A muscle worked in his jaw. "Look, I've seen ladies hanging out for a rich husband, and this is not how it's done. You have to at least pretend to care."

"Why should I, when no one here would give fivepence for us? They'd separate us, and lock me up again the first chance they get. The first _whiff_ of scandal...Do you remember how many days it was you combed my hair and fed me gruel, before I was well enough to speak?"

"A week. An eternity. I don't know. I won't let them take you away again, I promise. But these people are not the ones responsible for your internment. They've never heard the name Sharpe. Here we have a blank slate, and you could try to be less...abrupt."

Lucille reached up to straighten his cravat. He was so earnest, so eager to please. "Sometimes, Thomas, it's hard for me to remember that other people are real."

"Then what were you planning to do with him, this husband of yours? Once you'd landed him."

"Poison, probably. Small gradual doses, to allay suspicion."

"Of course," he said, in a tone that suggested quite the opposite. Did he think she would bring a _stranger_ to live in their mother's house, someone who would go poking around, unearthing secrets and prying open doors that had been sealed shut for decades? Did he imagine they could live somewhere _else_? It was impossible. Lucille had buried their mother's ghost at Allerdale Hall, and she meant to see the bitter old bitch stayed there.

Thomas asked, "When did you become so angry?"

"I'm not. I'm only fearful of losing you." That was why they were doing this, after all—to stay together. To save the only home they had ever known. She drained the last of the champagne. "And it may happen anyway. Without the money I'll lose you to a vocation, to the Army, to time and chance. And how _will_ we get the money? My chances of success are as slim as yours, you know—I have never been any good at pretending to be what I am not. What's more, even if I had the manners of a duchess, I am not in the first bloom of youth. I am not desirable, as they reckon it.”

"To me you are the most beautiful woman in the world and always will be," he assured her with feeling. In that moment she believed him, because Thomas had a way of making you believe whatever he needed you to.

It was not that Thomas was in the habit of _lying_. Rather, he dissembled so readily it was impossible to discern if there was any truth beneath the layers of deception––for he deceived himself as much as anyone else. By contrast Lucille did not deal in self-deception. She was done ceding control of her own life, and she was done trusting or valuing other people. No one else mattered besides Thomas.

He dropped a chaste kiss on her brow and made her promise to save him a waltz before returning to the festivities. When she saw him again it was with a bud of a girl on his arm. The sight of them, the way she clung to him, dropped Lucille in her tracks. Lord, but she couldn't have been older than…Then again it wasn't her age that struck Lucille so much as the way she carried herself, the lack of confidence, the way her body unfurled itself toward Thomas like a flower toward the sun. Like he was the first human being to turn the full force of his attention on her. Lucille didn't need to be told the girl was an heiress. She didn't even need to cast a cursory glance over the girl's clothes to confirm it (Lucille herself was lucky she was a skilled needlewoman, and that Mother's wardrobe had been capacious). Thomas could only have one purpose in being so particular in his attentions. Whatever else Thomas was, he was not stupid; he would have made inquiries. The girl would have both a sizeable fortune and no interfering relatives. Bile rose in Lucille’s throat. _He's doing this for us._

"Lucille, this is Miss Margaret Vane. Margaret, my sister Lucille." The girl giggled, flushed from the dance and basking in the glow of Thomas’s adoration. Lucille knew what that felt like. _To me you are the most beautiful woman in the world and always will be_. He had said that. But would he ever look at Lucille in public the way he was looking at this chit now? Would he proclaim she was precious to him for all the world to see? Or must they keep this ruse up forever?

His eyes begged her to understand and to play along. And for now that’s what it was, a ruse. But she reflected there was nothing to stop Thomas from putting Lucille aside if he ever tired of her. What if he preferred someone less damaged? He might be marrying this unknown girl for her money, but what if he grew to love her? It was, after all, in his nature to be easily led and easily loved. She saw in a flash that the greatest impediment to Thomas and Lucille being together might turn out to be Thomas himself (_in which case I’ll kill him too_, whispered a small voice).

_Love is pain_, she reminded herself. That was the oldest truth there was. Maybe he didn’t even know how he was hurting her; maybe he was doing it on purpose. It didn’t matter. She dug her nails into her palm, feeling the bite of Mother's ring as she bustled forward to greet the newcomer with all the warmth in her furious, fearful heart.


End file.
